


The Turn of the Year

by unendingexhaustion



Category: Faerie Folklore, Fairy Tales & Related Fandoms, Original Work
Genre: Fae & Fairies, Magical Realism, Other, Poetry, freeform poetry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-04
Updated: 2018-12-04
Packaged: 2019-09-06 22:35:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 516
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16841776
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unendingexhaustion/pseuds/unendingexhaustion
Summary: The Queens of the seasonal courts, in all their many mysteries.





	The Turn of the Year

Spring. She is the dark, rich mud; the pale new growth that springs forth from the rot. Her love is birdsong: it ebbs and flows, twining through the budding branches and over bark, and ever it calls you onward to her rain-damp bed of soil and leaves. Her fury is that of a flood: to disregard it is to drown in a wave of icy snowmelt. The ground is more fertile afterwards, but those who dwelt there did not live to see it.

Summer. She is radiant and terrible and blinding as the sun, she is the buzzing scream of insects and the heavy rumble of distant thunder. Her love is the tall grass, caressing your limbs and bidding you to sleep, sleep, just for a moment my love, here in the shade of the trees. Sleep until the burning sun is gone, and dance with her to the song of the cicadas under the endless vault of stars. The sun is a star as well, and here her fire is dimmed like her sisters to take you in her arms. Her fury is that of a late summer drought, cracked earth and withered stalks, the mighty river reduced to a sluggish trickle by the heat of her rage.

Autumn. She is a breeze more seen than felt, sending the fallen leaves twisting across the empty ground. She is the fallen apples at the base of the tree, both nourishing and intoxicating, the circling wasps cider-drunk and docile. Her love is a steady, sweet decay. The sunsets come earlier, now, and the scent of rotting leaves threads through the dark like twine through a labyrinth of skeletal trees. It’s a joyful kind of fear when her fingers wrap around your throat from behind, and you fall willing and wild to her honey-wine kiss. Her fury is a biting wind, finding every weakness and sending biting needles of cold to pierce the flesh beneath. It’s an eerie moaning in the night, when you tell yourself it’s nothing to be afraid of, but the doubt will always linger, cold, in the base of your skull.

Winter. She is a steaming exhale on a December morning, the colors of the dawn reflected off the crystalline plane of snow. She is the shining aurora in the depths of the longest night. She is the silence and the creeping lacy spread of frost. Her love is all-consuming, so cold it’s warm, curled and drowsing in a nest of pine needles and packed snow. She is so, so very cold, her lips and fingers purple with it, and you cannot help but kiss them that the warmth of your lips and breath might bring her comfort. The smile she gives you is warm and sweet as cocoa. It is her nature to be cold, yes, but winter is not without it’s secret warmths to be shared with lovers. Her fury is bare grey stone, coated with seeping ice. It is not violent, or desperate, it simply is. The ice grows, too slowly to notice, until one day it all comes crashing down.


End file.
